Did you ever dream that you were a dog agility super champ except then it switched and you were at some germy, grungy, derelict seaside park in the dark and the carnies were actually drug addled zombies that were shambling after you with hammers and their big teeth? And then as you're trying to escape your way out from under their oily, horrible claws by clambering up a rat infested palm tree, you're all, this is about dog agility like, how?

02 February 2013

Ruby's eyes like cloudy skies.

It's hard to take a picture of Ruby where she opens both her eyes, because her eyes stay dilated and she doesn't wear shades. The list of things wrong with her eyes is long and confusing. The progressive retinal atrophy doesn't hurt her but causes the dilating and is why she's slowly going blind. The immune keratitis scleritis is controlled. The cholesterol corneal degeneration might hurt, even though it looks like fluffy clouds moving over her eyes like they're sky.

Ruby goes to a special dog ophthomologist. She's one of my most favorite vets. She has the ability to poke around in eyes and pop dog cookies in Ruby's mouth at the same. Ruby just sits on my lap and endures. The cookie popping helps immensely. She did a surgery yesterday, on the worse eye, Ruby sat on my lap the whole time and I held on and didn't watch. Needles and knifes in the eye.

The doc popped cookies in there and told me dog eye stories the whole time. Ruby seemed fine. She got sent home with some new eye drugs, and is wearing a dog contact lens til it falls out. It's ok if it does. She had to have the clouds scraped off the cornea because they wanted to pop an ulcer. I don't know which one of the diseases caused that, I've sort of given up trying to keep track.

I asked her, should she stay off the beach, or out of the sun? She sure does like to go, even though it makes her squint and I worry about her. She just trots by my leg the whole time, I try to cast her a shadow, and we keep track of each other. It doesn't seem like it's hurting her? That's all I really care about. I don't much care if she goes all the way blind, we know about that already and she still gets around real good, I just don't want her to hurt.

She answered, "Let her be a dog. She'll tell you if she doesn't want to go."

4 comments:

I could ask the vet about the goggles. But I don't know if goggles fall under the category of Let Her Be a Dog. According to Portlandia, in the magic kingdom of Portland they sell dog sunglasses, although it's always cloudy there. Maybe Ruby would like to live in Portland.

Laura Hartwick, Captain

Many people around Santa Cruz know Laura as the lady with all those little black dogs. Many people know her as a horse trainer. Many people know her as the artist with the small brushes. Many people know her as that hoity graphic designer.
None of them would be wrong.
All the dogs of Team Small Dog, righteously awesome.
Laura Hartwick is usually a nice person. Except when she isn't. Be nice, don't bite, and run faster.